In the Dirt of the Day
by Medea1313
Summary: Seventeen years postSerenity, old friends meet again, earthbound. MalInara.
1. 1, 2, 3

Author's Notes: The title is from a Joanna Newsom song, "Sprout and the Bean." There may be future fragments if I get inspired and/or if people show interest.

-1-

"I never thought I'd see the day when Malcolm Reynolds kissed the dirt," she said, standing at the edge of the wide field. She had been watching him for long minutes, the slow and steady movement of the plow, his bent head and graying hair. He had not looked up, not once. Part of her wished to leave it that way, to hold her breath and turn away, so that he would continue forever with the image of another her, a younger self. Seeing him like this was a shock, she could admit that in the privacy of her thoughts — no River now, to invade — and how would he look at her, with the years on her?

She waited until he was close enough to hear, close enough to see, and in the end she stayed, spoke.

He raised his head, wiped sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand, leaving smudges of dirt. He squinted at her for a long moment, his face unreadable. She gazed steadily back, years and years of calm carrying her through this. What did he see? A beautiful woman, still, but no longer young. There were tiny soft creases around her eyes and mouth, in the flesh of her hands. It was cool for spring, and styles were soberer now — none of her old red silks, she wore a wool gown of dark blue, simple and elegant, a heavy shawl wrapped around her torso. She was not the vision she had been. Neither was he.

"I don't kiss it," he said finally, voice rusty. "I work it. There's a difference."

"I'm sure there is," she agreed equably, and smiled. He smiled too, and then didn't. He stepped carefully over the furrows between them, his eyes always on her.

"What brings you to these parts Inara?" he asked. He didn't say: I never thought I'd see you again. He didn't say: you look the same. He said, "I didn't think we had any folks on this ball of dirt with enough to entice a high-class… woman, like yourself."

She'd been expecting him to call her whore. She folded her hands together and ignored him. She had made her choice. A different choice, on Sihnon, kneeling before her gold and fire altar, than it was here, beneath the wide open sky, faced with him. "You'd be surprised," she said, and let that hang a moment, before she told him the truth. "In fact, that is not why I'm here. I am opening a new Training House and Sanctuary. With the rim so much safer these days, the Guild has judged it fit to expand its operations. And a place like this, calm and quiet, is perfect for retreat, meditation, rest."

Mal seemed unable to find an appropriate response. Inara stood grave and silent, waiting. "So you're not…"

"I am retired from active service Mal," she explained, saving them both the indignity of making him finish the question. "I am too old."

The shocked look on his face pleased her. She should be past such vanity, but she was not, entirely.

He made a restless motion with his hands, shook his head. "Ai ya." He hooked his thumbs on the loops of his belt, as he used to do with his gun holster. He didn't wear a gun anymore, Inara noticed, and wondered when that changed, when he felt safe enough in his fields to go without a weapon. "So you're staying then?"

"I am staying," Inara confirmed. His eyes interrogated her, as if she were a ghost, a dream. A small smile touched her lips. She could point out that if she were a ghost, or a dream, there would be no network of gentle lines on her face, but he was intelligent enough to figure that out for himself. "I just bought a piece of land, up the hill. There's a spectacular view. An architect is surveying the area now and drawing up plans. We hope to have construction completed before winter. For now I am in town, at the Inn." There was only one town, near enough, one inn. He would know where to find her, if he looked. He himself had been easy enough to find. The name of the moon she had from Kaylee and… well, few farmers kept an old spaceship behind their house, even one that did not fly anymore.

"And you just… picked Hestia, out of all the moons – all the worlds for that matter?"

Inara arched her eyebrows at him, an indication of how ridiculous the question was. She did not, however, answer it. "It's a beautiful place," she said, gesturing to the mountain range in the distance, shining blue and white, "not developed enough to distract those who come to me for shelter and quiet."

"And you, you looking for shelter and quiet?" he asked, his eyes still on the mountains, the wheat fields stretching from where they stood to the foothills, long acres of dirt and sweat and gold.

"Perhaps," Inara said, and smiled. "Kaylee sends her love, to you and Zoe. Is she about?"

He turned back from the view. "Reckon she's in the east fields today, with the kid." He said it casually, hoping to shock her perhaps. She was too well-informed for that. "The kid" was Zoe's son, Wash Alleyne. Kaylee said she'd announced one night at dinner that she was having a baby. Never said who the father was. The boy must be about twelve now. "How's Mrs. Tam?"

"Very happy," Inara informed him. "You should wave her. She misses you. She's building ships now, you know."

Mal snorted, shook his head again. "Fancy ones."

"Solid," Inara corrected him. "Quality ships." After the Transition, there was nothing to keep Simon from his work. He'd set up the best hospital on the rim — one of the best in the 'verse now. He and Kaylee and their passel of children practically glowed with satisfaction every time she saw them. So some of them had got it right. The ones without ghosts. (River a ghost of another kind, appearing out of air in Inara's garden with bare toes and asking her for the steps to a long-forgotten dance. Before she left she said, "It's time," and kissed both of Inara's cheeks, her lips cool and quick, her smile lingering.)

"Not my thing," Mal lied, and Inara let him. His boots encrusted with earth now.

"I'll let you get back to your work," she said, because they could stand so forever, saying and not saying. "You know where to find me. Stop by, any time. I'll make you a cup of tea."

"Don't go saying that to everyone," Mal warned her. "You can't buy that stuff here, not for any price. Men'd kill for that."

Her lips curved softly, a practiced smile, patient. "I will not go saying that to everyone," she assured him solemnly, and turned to walk back to town.

-2-

Wash was a tall boy, saucer eyes and hair at all ends. He had been staring at Inara for half an hour and every so often Zoe would cuff him on the back of the head, and he would stammer something and look down at the carpet for a minute before his eyes crept back up.

"Couldn't believe it when Mal told me," Zoe said, her smile loose and easy. "Still can't, some ways. You sitting there like a queen, after all these years."

Inara laughed, easy too, and shook her head. "You are right about _all these years_. But I am certainly no queen. Though I came close, once," she recalled, shaking her head fondly at the memory. Zoe gestured her onward and Inara explained, "On Anya the rich call themselves princes and princesses, a local conceit. Years ago, one of them proposed to me. I can't even remember his name anymore." That was a lie, but one Zoe was willing to accept.

"Did you consider it?"

"No."

"Just as well. You seem to have done pretty well for yourself as it is," Zoe judged. Her hair a gray brown cloud, deep lines around her eyes

"I suppose I have," Inara agreed. "And so have you." Zoe seemed at ease in the suite, the inn's best. Her worn clothes were at odds with the imported carpet, the hangings on the walls — not up to Inara's standards, but good enough — but she showed no sign of discomfort. A woman who knew who she was, where she belonged. They were both that, at least, Inara thought.

Zoe put a hand in her son's hair, though he squirmed and made a face. "We get on. I grew up on a farm, guess I always knew I'd end up back on one."

Inara set down her teacup, a quiet clink of china. "I was surprised to find Mal here," she admitted. "I thought he'd die with that ship."

"So did he," Zoe agreed simply. She released Wash and sat forward, clasping her hands and deciding what to say, what not to say. The boy gazed at Inara, unblinking. "Of course he will, someways, that's why he won't sell it for parts. Just keeps it sitting there, bu zhong yang though it is. But after Transition, some of his ghosts left him I think. The ground got a mite more desirable when no one was coming to take it away."

"And so, here he is," Inara said, which was not true either, because here he was not. He had not come to the inn, though it was two weeks since she stood beside his field. Zoe brought excuses which did not come from him.

"Here he is," Zoe agreed quietly. Her eyes rested on Inara, older eyes, warm and deep. "Here we all are."

-3-

"I never thought I'd see the day when Inara Serra kissed the dirt," he said, standing in the doorway of her private garden. Her hands sunk deep into the newly settled earth, planting flowers. She sat back on her heels and wiped them off with a cloth set on the stones beside her.

"You knew me in space Mal," she said. "I have always gardened, when possible."

He was wearing clean clothes, which she supposed was a courtesy on his part. One courtesy, after eight months of waiting. The house was complete now, the halls polished and waiting to be filled. Inara walked from room to room alone, breathing in the smell of home. In the mornings, she planned and planted. In the afternoon, she meditated and read books, carefully turning each priceless page. She waited.

"They allow that kind of stuff?" Mal asked, dubious. "I wouldn't think they'd want Companions to get their hands dirty."

"Our hands are already dirty Mal," Inara replied sweetly, meeting his smile with her own, a challenge. She stood, still graceful, though her knees ached and the small of her back. "In fact my House Priestess always encouraged gardening. It can be extremely meditative." He snorted and she ignored him. He had not changed, not at all. She continued, undaunted. "It roots us in the earth. Don't you find that?"

"_Farming_ is work," he said, "hard work. This meditative crap is for people who don't need to work for their food."

"Our hands are already dirty Mal," Inara repeated quietly, and caught the look in his eye, the shift. She knew him well enough to know that he lied. His fields were now to him what the stars had been: peace.

"And where are your lovely companions?" Mal asked, filling the silence.

"They are on their way. My fellow instructors are visiting rim planets now, collecting the children who have been selected and searching for new prospects. The first groups will arrive soon. Others will come when they have need." She longed for them, for small bare feet and laughter, for large eyes and questions. She was too old for children, herself; she retired late.

"So it's just you?" There was a scar on his jaw that was new, unexpected. Inara wanted to touch it, and ask. Seventeen years. Eight months.

"It's just me," she affirmed. "Would you like a tour?"

They walked through the half-furnished rooms, Inara explaining design choices, Mal commenting on other people's luxuries. Some of the furniture she was having built here, by design. Other things were on their way. Her room was full, its corner windows stretching full and open upon the mountain range, the golden singing fields below. They stood side by side there, not touching.

"Quite a place," Mal said, his creaky old man's voice.

"Why didn't you come before?" she asked. He might have asked her the same thing, but he didn't want her answer.

"Wanted to see if you were really going to stay."

"I am."

"I can see that now."

She wanted to ask, can you? She wanted to be what she had been, once, young and supple and capable of running or staying. Now she could only stay. She had not dyed her hair since she made moonfall, the silver was coming through the dark.

She turned her head to look at him. He was watching her, not the mountains. "I still sort of think if I touch you, you'll vanish," he admitted. She remembered a man who touched her jaw just where his scar was; theirs were matching, hers better hidden. She remembered leaving him to his.

"Try," she said.


	2. 4

-4-

The first time she came into his house it smelled of roasting vegetables and herbs. "You cook," she said, hanging her coat by the door. His was there, patched brown leather. Her fingers caught a fold.

"Gotta eat," Mal said. One of his hands crept around her waist, his mouth in her hair. Inara smiled. "Guess you got someone to do that for you though."

"Well I can hardly cook for thirty people," Inara said, turning in the circumference of his arm. Their breaths mingled. He tasted of earth now, of things deeply planted.

"Can I have a tour?" she asked. He broke away, shrugging.

"Not much to see."

The big house next door he and Zoe had built a few years ago to accommodate a growing boy, a couple farm hands. Room enough for him, Zoe had said, but he liked to stay apart, liked his solitude. Privacy, he called it. Inara looked around at the dusty corners of the room. When they first settled, they'd lived in two rooms, he and Zoe and little Wash. Jayne, luckily for all of them given the space, had just been called away to his sick mother. All the money, what little they had, had gone into the farm. On warm nights, Mal used to sleep on Serenity just to get out of the cramped space. Now it was only him though, the front room for cooking and eating and living, and a side room for sleeping. Inara wandered through without asking, peeking into his bedroom. Strange to recognize things: a chair, his worn bedspread.

"Tain't much," Mal said stiffly, eyes on her.

"But it's yours," Inara replied softly, turning back to him. One of her hands rested on the frame of the door, the wood he had harvested and cut and planed, its grain rough and real.

"Suppose so." He gave nothing away, she thought, even now. In her bed he had smiled like a younger man, time erased from their skin by the sun through the window. He stepped toward her, said, "We better eat 'fore it gets cold."

After dinner he would not let her help with the dishes. He kissed her palm. "Wouldn't want your students to think calluses were acceptable," he teased.

"Mal, I'm not a doll," she laughed, trying to insinuate herself between him and the sink. His raised hands covered with soap suds, threatening her hair. She shrieked, pulled back and he returned to his task. She leaned on the kitchen counter and mocked his domesticization, since he would not let her share it.

In his narrow bed he said, "You're a lady," as if it meant something different from a doll. He winced when the bed frame creaked. She savored the sound.


	3. 5

-5-

In the great hall, Inara taught them to dance. In bare feet, in the beginning, to break them out of their self-imposed dignity. That was to be learned later. First came grace. Girls from thirty different worlds, their feet pattering over her lacquered floor. Their backs arching, their chins up. A tumble, a laugh. Another try. She stepped carefully between them, her face a calm mask. She encouraged their play, to a point, and asked for them to listen after, their sweet faces lifted to her words, their slender bodies quiet enough to learn control.

One day she asked Mal to come, to demonstrate a complex series of steps that could only be danced by two, together. The girls sat cross-legged on the floor all around. A few whispered and giggled down the line. Others, the most promising, watched with wide and curious eyes.

"I can't believe you want me to do this," Mal muttered as they stood in the center of the room. His coat was off, her shoes were on. She was trying not to laugh.

"I thought you would like the attention of all these beautiful young women," Inara teased, placing her palms against his. He gave her a horrified look, and leaned closer.

"I like the attention of one particular beautiful—"

"Don't you dare say 'old' Mal."

"Old? I was speaking of that one right over there." He gestured at Marrol, who was napping in the corner. "Just about the right age I think."

Inara rolled her eyes. "Marrol, please do pay attention," she called. The girl sat up, sudden, blinking, not a day older than thirteen.

"I'm here!"

"I know you're here dear. But your eyes have to be open to properly note the steps," Inara reminded her. Back to position, their hands between them. "Not funny," she whispered to him.

"You're beautiful," he whispered back. Her brows contracted slightly. He could still surprise her. Their eyes questioning one another, intent, forgetting the room full of girls. "You owe me," he added in his usual tone.

She laughed. "Just dance," she sighed, and they did. Grace, and something more.


	4. 6

-6-

They took a lantern onto Serenity, oil-burning and ancient. She stepped carefully over the rusted frame, trying not to weep. Mal's face was closed and cold.

"One day she just wouldn't fly no more," he said. "Not a thing to be done."

She didn't try to touch him. She wrapped herself up and followed him through their memories, their ghosts. His more than hers.

In her shuttle they sat side-by-side on the broken frame of a bed. "I was happy here," she said, "but over the years what I thought of, what I held onto, were the times when I was not happy. When I was hurt, or frightened, or unsure. Those were emotions that were mine. I have been happy in many places, for many people. But here I was real."

"When'd we get old enough to talk like this?" Mal asked. His arms on his knees, his body bent and dark in the lantern light.

"We could try to fight instead. For old time's sake," Inara suggested. She reached over and claimed one of his hands.

"You know what I remember?" Mal asked, looking up. Light filled the crags of his face.

"What?"

He blinked, shadows moving, and then shook his head. "No, nothing." He didn't take his hand away. A step, Inara thought.


	5. 7

-7-

At the market Inara lingered over fresh fruit, bought handfuls of fresh green lettuce and a new comb, polished wood. The trader with the corner stall opened his treasure box and presented her with a book, its cover faded and thin. Imported specially for her. She paid him handsomely for the favor and held the book open for the children who crowded around. Mothers shook their heads and smiled. Once it became clear that the House on the hill was not there to steal men, local attitudes had softened considerably. Now the women came on pilgrimages, offering local goods for a chance to touch real silk, asking questions about men, about health, as if she were a wise woman. Her novices stayed in the Training House, but there were children enough at the market eager to ask questions of the lady.

Wash appeared at her elbow, his old shyness lost. "We have the best apples on the whole moon," he boasted.

"I know," Inara said and gave him her hand to lead her. Mal was sitting at their stall with his feet up, slowly cutting an apple into sections.

"You grow them yourself," Inara said, startled at the reminder of old wounds in this place of light and abundance. He looked down at his hands, as if he hadn't even noticed what they were about.


	6. 8

-8-

Mal had trouble sleeping on Inara's silk sheets. The softness kissed him awake in the middle of the night. His breath caught, his eyes opened, and he stared at the high ceiling, the hint of starlight from the window. Inara woke too. Her body, trained and practiced to perfection, could not rest while someone lay awake beside her.

He used to get up when sleep deserted him, and she would rise also; they had spoken in hushed tones or played card games at an antique wooden table, or made love again, in the dark. But eventually he must have realized that his movement opened her eyes, that when he sat up she would too, no matter how long her day, how hard the shadows under her eyes. He began to lie still; he kept his eyes closed and his breath steady, a slow rhythm to fool her.

The deception did not work. An imperceptible shift stirred her and she listened to his even breathing and knew it to be a lie, and a gift. She could not change what she had been — what she was, still, in her lungs and aching muscle tissues — but she could pretend, as he did.

They lay still in her wide bed, counting each other's breaths.


	7. 9, 10

-9-

She knocked on his door in the hour before dawn. His house familiar to her now, she could walk in without a light but for this she needed his permission to enter. He opened the door, blinking sleep from his eyes. He was dressed, already awake for the day, but he had clearly not been expecting visitors.

"'Nara. What's wrong?"

She held her arms out with their small, sleeping bundle. The baby was wrapped tightly against the cold, small squinted face peeking out. "Her mother died," she explained, "She had no one." Following questions, the local women had taken to asking for her at births. This one had not asked, had simply limped up the hill her hands bracing her lower back, a bare slip of a thing. Please, she had said.

Mal was awake now, sifting implications. Inara's eyes and throat and arms seemed to have escaped her control. They longed without her consent. "What are you looking for?" he asked.

"I don't want her to be a ward of the house," Inara admitted. "I want her to be ours." Mine was a word she still had trouble forcing out. But ours, that was something she could hold on her tongue. Something she could long for, and keep close.

He scrubbed a hand over his face, into his sleep-filled silver hair. "Aren't we a mite old for this kind of thing?" he asked, half a smile on his face. She drew the baby back to herself, her arms aching with the weight. But she would grow used to that. She would grow.

"Don't you dare say 'old' Mal," she whispered, even though she was, but she felt newborn now, open and ready. "Say 'scarred.' Say 'broken' and 'stubborn' and 'stupid.' Don't say old. We're not old. At least, I'm not."

His eyes aching on her face, and a rueful smile beneath. "What're we gonna call her?" he asked, and Inara smiled back, stepped inside.

-10-

The garden was her favorite hiding spot. In games of hide and seek, or when she was angry or sad, or when she slipped away from the preoccupied gaze of the novice set to mind her, she could always be found in the garden. The flowers Inara planted had long since bloomed and died and bloomed again. Safa could spend hours tending them: watering, tearing up and planting again with little thought for the consequences, the delicate systems of roots.

After the work in the fields was done Mal came walking up the hill to sit in the garden and watch her play. "Daddy," she said, "Mother Tree is lonely." Mother Tree was the one in the corner, leafy arms providing shade in the heat of midday. "Daddy," she asked, "why can't there be flowers all the time?" Her blue-green eyes were not mirrors of his, her gold hair slender and straight; she was entirely new. "Ask your mother," he said, "This ain't my area of expertise."

"Daddy," she asked, "when can we go in a space ship?" He smiled, and promised, "Soon, darling." Inara watched, but he did not flinch; he pointed at the sky and told Safa how the constellations came to life when you got close enough. He teased her small, honest face and made her laugh.

Later, Inara knelt on the stones and showed her daughter how to work gently, how to protect the plants. They danced barefoot on the terrace before bed and all three kissed each other goodnight. Cheeks and eyes and noses and lips.

* * *

A/N: I think this is going to be all for this story. It would be very easy to keep going forever, and if I get enough pleas, or the characters won't leave me alone, I may write more – but I don't want to drag it out just because I can (see BtVS Season 7). Also, I need to work on my thesis. I am notoriously bad at knowing when to stop however, so this is a statement of intention, which may or may not translate into reality.

Thanks for all the great feedback!


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